East of Eden (1955)

Cal Trask daily finds himself competing with his brother Aron (Richard Davalos) for their father, Adam’s (Raymond Massey) attention. Considering himself the black sheep of the family, Cal is further convinced of his place when he realizes that his mother Kate (Jo Van Fleet) is still alive. Bored by Adam and his virtues, she leaves him and her two small children to become a madam and live a life of pleasure in another town nearby. Cal can relate to her on several levels and seeing himself in her, he understands why his father has been so distant. This only makes him try harder to win Adam’s love. Thinking to help him recoup his losses after a refrigeration venture, Cal borrows money from Kate and makes a small fortune on a bean crop, which comes in handy at the beginning of WWI. When Adam refuses the gift, admonishing Cal for taking advantage of the war’s supply and demand, Cal loses all patience. Seeing that his father is set in his ways, he let’s Aron in on the secret of their mother. This prompts Aron to get thoroughly drunk for the first time with disastrous consequences.

When Adam learns that Aron has joined the war and left for camp, he has a massive stroke. Cal, immediately remorseful, is eager to help him any way he can. Abra (Julie Harris), Aron’s fiancée, understands the torture Cal has been going through and privately pleads with Adam to let Cal help him recuperate. Adam does so much to Abra’s relief and Cal’s delighted surprise.

This was James Dean’s first major movie role and he was perfect for it. Elia Kazan wanted Dean for the part specifically. “Jimmy was it. He was vengeful. He had a sense of aloneness. He was suspicious. He let you into a private club that had only a few members.” With a perfect balance between torture and pleasure, you can’t help but love Dean’s Cal. As someone who has read East of Eden, I did not have the compassion for the book version of Cal as I did for Dean’s version. I think all viewers could agree, we love him when he’s good and we understand and forgive him when he’s bad. When Adam whispers that he wants only Cal to take care of him, it’s such a heart-warming moment. We want it for Cal as much as he does.

Imagine if it was the two of them as brothers!

Other great dysfuctional relationships between parent(s) and their child that I have seen:

Now Voyager

Gypsy

The Subject Was Roses

The Goddess

Ordinary People

Mommie Dearest

 

Tonight on TCM!

The Wrong Man (1956) A musician is mistaken for a vicious thief, with devastating results. Cast: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle. Dir: Alfred Hitchcock.

Blossoms in the Dust (1941)

Edna (Greer Garson) and her adoptive sister Charlotte (Marsha Hunt) are happily set to be married into the upper crust of Wisconsin society. However, their destinies are changed when Edna breaks off her engagement to marry Texan Sam Gladney (Walter Pidgeon) an associate of her father’s who brashly declares he will marry her. When Sam returns a year later for Edna, after opening up his flourmill, Mr. and Mrs. Keats (Kathleen Howard and George Lessey), Charlotte's future in-laws, tell the Kahlys (Fay Holden and Samuel Hinds) that their son Allan (William Henry) cannot marry her because she was a "nameless" foundling. Charlotte is devastated by the news and kills herself.

Two years later, Edna, who has moved to Texas and married Sam, gives birth to a boy and is told that she can have no more children. On Christmas Day, a few years later, tragedy strikes when their son is killed in an accident. Edna hides her grief by becoming a society hostess until Sam and Dr. Max Bresler (Felix Bressart), who attended her at Sammy's birth, try to get her interested in caring for other children. Though reticent at first, she and Sam set up a day nursery for working mothers, which they finance from their own fortune until Sam loses his mill due to the decline of wheat prices.

Selling everything they own, they move to Fort Worth where Sam works as a mill hand while trying to develop a new wheat process. On the day that Edna takes his new process to be notarized, she sees some children in a courtroom and discovers that they are orphans, tagged like cattle, and rejected by prospective adoptive parents because they are illegitimate. She brings two children home; one of them is named Tony who is very ill. With very little money and a lot of help from her friends Zeke and Cleo (Clinton Rosemond and Theresa Harris), she opens a storefront orphanage called the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society and arranges for adoptions for her charges, making certain parents and children are well suited for each other. However, the city councilmen close the home for zoning violations. Determined to keep up the fight, Edna must do so without Sam who passes away. 

She travels throughout Texas, collecting funds until she is able to open a large new home. As the years pass, Edna finds good homes for many children, but realizes that she has additional work to do when she receives a donation from a despondent young woman who is in the same predicament as her sister Charlotte was. Determined to change the law that brands children "illegitimate" and have it removed from birth certificates she fights and wins her battle to have a bill passed in the Texas legislature. But once one battle is over she must fight another, this time she fights for Tony who is wanted by a husband and wife who recently lost their only child. Wanting Tony for herself, Edna must stop and think what’s best for the child she loves so much and eventually gives him away to a loving home where he can have all the attention from a mother and a father.

A story based on the real life of Edna Gladney, Blossoms in the Dust is a real heartwrencher. In my opinion, Greer Garson was the best at eliciting sympathy…and tears. She was a phenomenal actress as TCM will prove tonight by showing the five movies that garnered her the distinction of being the only actress besides Bette Davis to be nominated five times in a row for Best Actress! If you spend the evening with her, then you will also get a healthy dose of Walter Pidgeon, a dynamic and talented player in his own right.

Oscar trivia:

Greer Garson was nominated seven times in her career and holds the distinction of being nominated five times in a row, a distinction she share with Bette Davis. She was nominated for Best actress for her roles in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Miniver, Madame Curie, Mrs. Parkington, The Valley of Decision, and Sunrise at Campobello. She won her only Oscar for Mrs. Miniver.


Walter Pidgeon garnered two Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for his roles in Mrs. Miniver and Madame Curie.

Newman's Own: Harper (1966)

Harper’s a down and out private detective who’s addicted to his job despite not really liking any of his clients. He’s sacrificed his marriage to his passion for solving crime but doesn’t quite get why his wife (Janet Leigh) wants to divorce him. Harper is hired, on recommendation by his good friend Albert Graves (Arthur Hill) to find one of his missing clients, a Mr. Sampson, a millionaire who likes to womanize, drink heavily and then give away small fortunes. Harper’s encounter with Sampson’s indifferent wife, Elaine (Lauren Bacall) is the first indication that he has signed himself up for more than he bargained for. He is suddenly surrounded by neurotic characters like Miranda Sampson (Pamela Tiffin), Sampson’s spoiled and man-hungry daughter, Alan Taggert (Robert Wagner) the family pilot given to narcissism, Fay Estabrook (Shelley Winters) an aging and gluttonous starlet, Betty Fraley (Julie Harris) a seemingly lonely and drug addicted jazz singer, and Claude (Strother Martin), the crazy man living on top of a mountain that Mr. Sampson gave him. All are somehow connected and it will take Harper being beat up, chased by vehicles, and shot at to solve this crime that goes way beyond Mr. Sampson’s disappearance.

Harper is full of funny dialogue, intrigue and action. Obviously comfortable with his past successes, Harper is the type of film I enjoy seeing Newman in. He isn’t taking himself too seriously and the result is an actor who’s comfortable playing the anti-hero who pokes fun at himself and more hilariously, at others. This film is the continuous result of Newman becoming an icon of what can essentially be summed up in one word- cool.





Sidenote:
The character in Ross MacDonald’s book is actually name is Lew Archer however, Newman was considered box office gold with movies like Hud and The Hustler under his belt so, probably due to studio superstition, they changed Archer to Harper to keep the H streak going. A year later there was also Hombre.


Tonight on TCM!
Lee Remick!